Technology

Geopolitics and Generative AI: Will Middle Powers Reshape the Map?

Published

2 years ago

December 9, 2024

BOSTON, Dec. 9, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — As the generative AI map takes shape, the US and China are asserting their dominance. Tech companies from these GenAI superpowers have built a substantial lead in the creation and large-scale commercialization of top-performing large language models (LLMs). Another group of countries—the “GenAI middle powers”—is emerging, however, each with distinct strengths that may enable it to compete at a regional, and even global, scale as a supplier of the technology.

A new report, “How CEOs Can Navigate the New Geopolitics of GenAI,” from the BCG Henderson Institute and BCG’s Center for Geopolitics, looks at the current state of play and the implications for both corporate leaders and policymakers.

“As it becomes clear that GenAI will shape industries and societies, the emergence of middle powers signifies a critical shift in the global balance of technological power,” said Nikolaus Lang, global leader of the BCG Henderson Institute and a coauthor of the report. “For corporate leaders who are integrating GenAI into their business operations, relying solely on GenAI supplied by companies in the US or China could pose serious risks due to the possibility of regulations, data requirements and availability of the models all being vulnerable to shifts in government policy.”

Two AI Superpowers…For Now

The two AI superpowers—the US and China—are currently the only players with robust access to and control over sizeable portions of the entire GenAI value chain. They produce the most intellectual property (IP) and they have the largest AI talent pools; they have some of the richest data ecosystems in the world and the most data center infrastructure capacity, and they lead in capital access.

The US has had a pronounced head start, building on decades of AI leadership. Nearly 70% of the world’s notable AI models since 1950 have been developed by or in partnership with US-based companies or academic institutions, as have 57% of top-performing large language models (LLMs). The US is home to 60% of the top 2,000 AI scholars in the world and attracted roughly one-quarter of all AI specialists that relocated globally between 2022 and 2024; its total AI talent pool has grown to nearly half a million people, the largest in the world. US-based GenAI startups have also received unparalleled private investment: a total of $65 billion since 2019.

Some signs indicate that China is catching up to the US. Two Chinese companies (Alibaba and the GenAI startup 01.AI) contribute over one-quarter of the world’s top open-source LLMs. Established tech giants Baidu and Tencent have also released high-performing models, as have a new generation of GenAI startups, the so-called AI tigers. Top Chinese LLMs have substantially reduced the gap compared to state-of-the-art alternatives in the last year. China benefits from ample data center infrastructure and a strong AI talent bench, and current limitations in China’s access to cutting-edge chips for AI model training and inference are likely to delay rather than impede further progress.

Who Could Emerge as a New GenAI Player?

This US–China story has fueled a “two superpowers” narrative, but momentum is building in other parts of the world.

The European Union can position itself as a significant GenAI middle power by combining the strengths of its member states. The EU is already home to a nascent GenAI startup ecosystem and has the second-largest global AI specialist talent pool. As a sizeable market, with a combined GDP of $18 trillion, it can support the development of locally developed AI models that may be viewed as more protective of users’ data in the context of its demanding regulatory environment. While its GenAI startups have attracted considerable investment, the EU faces challenges in scaling infrastructure and bridging the funding gap compared to the US and China.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) can rely on substantial sovereign wealth funds and focused investments to rapidly grow their AI talent bench, expand data center infrastructure, and develop high-performing LLMs. Saudi Arabia has committed $40 billion to AI development and is increasing its data center capacity, while the UAE has launched a $10 billion AI VC fund and developed high-performing Arabic language models. Both nations’ efforts are supported by low energy costs and easing restrictions on access to cutting-edge chips. To sustain current advancements, Saudi Arabia and the UAE will need to continue growing their respective talent bases and expand technology export markets.

Japan and South Korea can build on their established tech ecosystems, significant R&D investments, and expertise in hardware to position themselves as GenAI middle powers. South Korea benefits from its strong position in semiconductor manufacturing and domestic companies making inroads in developing LLMs, while Japan has fostered partnerships among corporate, academic, and governmental institutions to accelerate model development. However, both nations will likely need to pursue a regional focus to consolidate sufficient market demand to justify the scale of investments needed to compete in the GenAI space.

Some countries may be able to compete by capitalizing on their robust AI research ecosystems and talent pools to build better, more cost-efficient LLMs. For example, Canada and the UK are home to a sizeable share of the world’s top AI scholars, have produced many notable AI models, and have published some of the most important AI research papers. Israel, despite its smaller population, has a high concentration of AI specialists and has developed competitive models. For these countries, opportunity lies in accelerating research breakthroughs.

A Call to Action for Leaders

On the one hand, companies across industries have a vested interest in a diversified supply of GenAI. The lessons of Covid-19 are stark: a massive disruption can create severe chokepoints and destroy value. If all options originate in just two countries, it could lead to disruptions in GenAI’s availability due to geopolitical shocks. Corporate leaders will need to build the “geopolitical muscle” required to sense coming shifts and adapt their operating models.

On the other hand, because AI sovereignty may soon become a critical source of national security, economic value, and soft power, governments of countries or in regions with potential to become GenAI middle powers should consider what it would take to claim the space.

“This race is far from over,” said Nikolaus Lang. “Both business and political leaders will need to navigate a dynamic and high-stakes environment, shaped by regulation, policy and technology. Whether the middle powers—and which ones—will establish a claim to the competitive supply of GenAI at a global scale is one of the biggest unknowns. How this plays out has the potential to rewrite the rules of the game.”

Download the publication here:
https://www.bcg.com/publications/2024/how-ceos-navigate-new-geopolitics-of-genai

Media Contact:
Eric Gregoire
+1 617 850 3783
gregoire.eric@bcg.com

About Boston Consulting Group
Boston Consulting Group partners with leaders in business and society to tackle their most important challenges and capture their greatest opportunities. BCG was the pioneer in business strategy when it was founded in 1963. Today, we work closely with clients to embrace a transformational approach aimed at benefiting all stakeholders—empowering organizations to grow, build sustainable competitive advantage, and drive positive societal impact.

Our diverse, global teams bring deep industry and functional expertise and a range of perspectives that question the status quo and spark change. BCG delivers solutions through leading-edge management consulting, technology and design, and corporate and digital ventures. We work in a uniquely collaborative model across the firm and throughout all levels of the client organization, fueled by the goal of helping our clients thrive and enabling them to make the world a better place.

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SOURCE Boston Consulting Group (BCG)

Technology

Safetyfirst Systems, LLC Provides Notice of Data Security Event

Published

45 minutes ago

July 24, 2026

PARSIPPANY, N.J., July 23, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Safetyfirst Systems, LLC (“SFS”) is providing notice of a data security event that may involve information relating to certain individuals. While SFS is not aware of any misuse of information associated with this event, it is providing notice to potentially affected individuals out of an abundance of caution.

On January 19, 2026, SFS identified suspicious activity involving a limited portion of its server environment. Upon discovering the activity, SFS quickly took steps to secure its systems, notified federal law enforcement, engaged leading third-party forensic specialists, and performed a detailed investigation into the nature, scope, and impact of the activity. The investigation determined that an unauthorized actor accessed and/or acquired certain files from limited SFS systems between January 16, 2026, and January 19, 2026. SFS then conducted a comprehensive review of the affected files to determine what information may have been involved and identify the individuals to whom the information relates. The review has recently concluded, and SFS is providing this notification to potentially impacted individuals out of an abundance of caution. Although the types of information vary by individual, the affected information may include names, Social Security numbers, and driver’s license numbers.

Protecting the privacy and security of the information entrusted to SFS is a responsibility the company takes very seriously. In response to this event, SFS promptly strengthened security measures, continues to enhance its technical safeguards and monitoring capabilities, and is reviewing existing policies and procedures to further protect against similar incidents in the future. SFS is also providing notice to potentially affected individuals and, where required, appropriate regulatory authorities.

Although SFS is unaware of any misuse of personal information impacted by this event, individuals are encouraged to remain vigilant against events of identity theft by reviewing account statements, explanation of benefits, and monitoring free credit reports for suspicious activity and to detect errors. Any suspicious activity should be reported to the appropriate insurance company, health care provider, or financial institution.

Individuals seeking additional information regarding this event can contact SFS’s dedicated assistance line at 1-833-289-5523 between the hours of 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Eastern time, Monday through Friday, excluding holidays. Individuals may also write to SFS at PO Box 101, 3299 US Highway 46, Parsippany, NJ 07054-9998.

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SOURCE Safetyfirst Systems, LLC

Technology

Sunrate and Mastercard Release White Paper on Agentic AI and the Future of B2B Global Payments

Published

45 minutes ago

July 24, 2026

SHANGHAI, July 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Sunrate, the global payment and treasury management platform, and Mastercard, a global technology company in the payments industry, unveiled a joint white paper, Beyond Automation: Defining Agentic Global Payments, at the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC).

Among the first reports in the payments industry to examine the impact of Agentic AI on B2B cross-border payments, the white paper provides a comprehensive framework for understanding how AI agents are reshaping enterprise payment operations. It proposes that cross-border payments are evolving beyond digitisation and automation into a new stage: Autonomy—where AI agents with reasoning, planning, and execution capabilities can independently orchestrate and optimise end-to-end payment and treasury workflows within defined governance frameworks.

As businesses expand across borders, B2B cross-border payments continue to be constrained by fragmented workflows, disconnected systems, foreign exchange inefficiencies, rising compliance requirements, and complex reconciliation processes. While traditional automation improves individual tasks, the white paper demonstrates that Agentic AI represents a fundamental shift by enabling intelligent agents to coordinate entire payment journeys across systems, counterparties, and approval workflows.

Drawing on Sunrate’s global payment infrastructure and AI-native product capabilities, together with Mastercard’s expertise in secure payment networks and data intelligence, the white paper defines Agentic Global Payments — a new category of AI-native global payment infrastructure built to automate and manage complex enterprise workflows.

The report identifies 16 major pain points across the B2B payment lifecycle and outlines 13 high-value AI use cases spanning supplier onboarding, accounts payable and receivable, virtual commercial cards, payment routing, foreign exchange management, compliance screening, fraud detection, reconciliation, and conversational operational support. It also demonstrates how AI agents can automate complex workflows—from extracting information across multiple document formats and conducting compliance checks to initiating payments, optimising FX execution, and completing reconciliation—while operating within enterprise governance and control frameworks.

The white paper further highlights that trusted adoption of agentic payments depends on more than technological capability. It identifies governance, transparency, security, and ecosystem collaboration as essential foundations for enterprise deployment, supported by frameworks such as Know Your Agent (KYA), payment tokenisation, auditability, and cross-industry interoperability.

Sunrate.AI portfolio currently includes the Payment Agent, FX Agent, Compliance Agent, Onboarding Agent, and Chat Agent, designed to help enterprises automate and optimise critical payment and treasury processes while maintaining compliance and operational control.

Mastercard has also been actively building the foundations for trusted agentic commerce – combining AI capabilities with verifiable authorisation, clear accountability and proven payments security. Its work in this area, including Agent Pay (alongside Agent Pay for Machines) and Verifiable Intent, are proof points in how Mastercard is enabling AI to participate in commerce safely and transparently.

“Our mission is to make global payments seamless, compliant, and intelligent,” said Paul Meng, Co-founder and CEO of Sunrate. “As businesses continue expanding internationally, AI agents will fundamentally reshape how enterprises manage global payments—enabling smoother capital flows, reducing operational friction, and embedding real-time intelligence into every payment decision. This white paper represents an important step in helping the industry understand how Agentic AI can be deployed responsibly at enterprise scale.”

“Agentic commerce is changing how businesses make and execute payment decisions, but speed without accountability creates new categories of risk,” said Anouska Ladds, Executive Vice President, Commercial & New Payment Flows, Asia Pacific, Mastercard. “As AI starts to act on behalf of businesses, autonomous payment decisions need a clear, auditable chain of identity, intent and action. That’s what allows organisations to delegate with genuine confidence — and what will determine whether agentic commerce scales past pilots.”

Released under WAIC 2026’s theme, “Intelligent Partners, Co-creating the Future,” the white paper provides business leaders with practical guidance on adopting AI-driven payment capabilities, covering implementation approaches, governance considerations, and real-world enterprise applications.

By combining Sunrate’s expertise in global payments and treasury management with Mastercard’s trusted payment infrastructure and network capabilities, the collaboration reflects a shared commitment to accelerating the next generation of intelligent, secure, and autonomous B2B global payments.

Click here to check the white paper.

About Sunrate

Sunrate is a leading global payment and treasury management platform for businesses worldwide. Founded in 2016, Sunrate has enabled companies to operate and scale both locally and globally in 190+ countries and regions with its cutting-edge infrastructure, global network, and unified solutions.

Sunrate operates through offices across key markets, including Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and London. The company partners with the top global financial institutions, such as Citibank, Standard Chartered, Barclays, J.P. Morgan. Sunrate is also the principal member of Mastercard and Visa. To learn more about Sunrate, visit https://www.sunrate.com/.

About Mastercard

Mastercard powers economies and empowers people in 200+ countries and territories worldwide. Together with our customers, we’re building a resilient economy where everyone can prosper. We support a wide range of digital payments choices, making transactions secure, simple, smart and accessible. Our technology and innovation, partnerships and networks combine to deliver a unique set of products and services that help people, businesses and governments realize their greatest potential.

www.mastercard.com

SOURCE Sunrate

Technology

JAMS Launches AI for Enterprise Job Scheduling: JAX and JAMS MCP

Published

45 minutes ago

July 24, 2026

A new AI agent and an open-standard connector let IT teams query, diagnose, and manage automation in plain language, on the model they choose, with operational data able to stay onshore inside their own network

SYDNEY, July 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — JAMS Software, an orchestration solution for scheduled and event-driven automation, today announced the general availability of two AI capabilities for enterprise job scheduling: JAX, an AI agent built into the JAMS Web Client, and JAMS MCP, a connector built on the open Model Context Protocol standard that brings JAMS into external AI coding tools. Both capabilities ship at no additional cost as part of JAMS Web.

Automation environments grow faster than the teams that run them. Jobs multiply across SQL Server, Azure Data Factory, Airflow, SAP, JDE, and Banner, and when one fails, finding the root cause often means searching several consoles at once, frequently outside business hours. At the same time, IT leaders carry pressure to adopt AI while staying accountable for where operational data goes. JAX and JAMS MCP close both gaps together.

Full details on how JAX and JAMS MCP work, including the control model behind every action, are available at jamsscheduler.com/product/ai.

JAX is an AI agent that runs inside the JAMS Web Client. It finds jobs, troubleshoots failures, and answers how-to questions in plain language, with each response grounded in the JAMS user guide and checked against a built-in glossary. JAX acts only when a user asks it to. Reads flow freely, and every write action pauses for the user’s explicit approval before it runs. JAX does not learn between sessions, and conversations are not retained on the server.

JAMS MCP is a connector, built on the open Model Context Protocol standard, that brings JAMS into the AI tools engineering teams already use, including Cursor, VS Code with Copilot, Claude Code, Claude Desktop, and Codex. Users query jobs, investigate failures, and manage runs in plain language without leaving their tool.

Both capabilities run inside the customer’s own network and act as the signed-in user, with that user’s exact JAMS permissions. There is no elevated AI account: whatever a user cannot do in the JAMS interface, JAX and JAMS MCP cannot do on that user’s behalf. Every JAX and MCP operation is recorded in its own dedicated log, and changes made through the JAMS API land in the JAMS audit trail like any other change. Customers choose their own AI model, whether a commercial provider such as OpenAI or Anthropic or a model running entirely on their own hardware, and JAMS never trains on customer data. In the current release, neither feature edits or deletes a job, folder, schedule, or agent definition. For teams that need operational data to stay onshore, JAX runs on a local model entirely inside the customer’s own network, so nothing leaves at all.

“Adopting AI usually means giving something up, most often visibility into where your data goes,” said Pete Hegland, Chief Executive Officer of JAMS Software. “We built JAX and JAMS MCP so that trade does not have to happen. Every action runs as the signed-in user, every change waits for approval, and the model can run on the customer’s own hardware, keeping operational data onshore.”

“For teams across Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore, two things matter: keeping data onshore, and getting answers when a job fails after hours,” said Shayne Cooper, Account Executive for APAC at JAMS Software. “JAX and JAMS MCP address both. The model can run on the customer’s own hardware, and the answer arrives in plain language at the moment it is needed.”

JAX and JAMS MCP are available now to all JAMS Web customers across Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore, with no separate licence, SKU, or additional cost. AI-assisted creation of new jobs and workflows from a plain-language description is on the roadmap for a future release, gated by the same approvals and permissions as every other action.

Learn how JAX and JAMS MCP work at https://jamsscheduler.com/product/ai.

Fast facts

JAX is an AI agent built into the JAMS Web Client for job scheduling and workflow automation.JAMS MCP is a connector built on the open Model Context Protocol standard, for Cursor, VS Code with Copilot, Claude Code, Claude Desktop, and Codex.Both act as the signed-in user, with that user’s exact JAMS permissions, and there is no elevated AI account.Customers choose the AI model, including a local model that runs entirely inside their own network.JAMS never trains on customer data.Both are available now at no additional cost as part of JAMS Web.

About JAMS Software
Founded in 1987, JAMS Software is an orchestration solution that helps IT teams centralize, automate, and manage scheduled and event-driven jobs across complex, hybrid environments. Over 850 customers rely on JAMS to run their automated workloads. JAMS Software, LLC is headquartered at 108 Patriot Drive, Suite A, Middletown, DE 19709.

Media Contact
Bobby Schmidt, Vice President of Marketing
press@jamssoftware.com
800.261.4267

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SOURCE JAMS Software